


Romance of the Star

by havisham



Category: Mercy of the Fallen – Dar Williams (Song), Original Work
Genre: F/F, Gentleness, Heroes & Heroines, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 09:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: A stranger in an empty land seeks the north star for guidance and friends for her journey.





	Romance of the Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



_O Fair North Star, steer me truly!_

The fire crackled brightly against the deep blue night and Darya watched with blurry eyes as the North Star blazed down upon her. The sky had been covered with rain-filled clouds the whole day through, but finally, the stars were out. But Darya had eyes for only one, the one she always prayed to despite everything. 

Darya had been a sailor in the wine-dark sea until one day a storm had wrecked her ship and cast only her on a foreign shore. Though she had spent many days here, she had not seen a single human being in this uninhabited place, though she found orchards bursting with fruits and vegetable gardens, all untended to. Distantly, she would see cottages and homes falling into ruin. The more she roamed, looking for another person, another being beside an animal or a bird, the more she wondered at the place she had landed in. 

The only thing familiar here were the stars that wheeled above her, and most of all, the North Star. 

Darya’s mother had once said that the North Star would grant a wish to one who followed her the most faithfully. Her mother had never left her village, but when Darya declared that she was destined for the sea, her mother had given her a brass compass that Darya still wore around her neck. 

It was this compass that she took out and rubbed with her shirt until it shone, the needle point, as ever, to the North Star. In a twinkling, Darya was half-asleep when she heard a growl at her elbow. 

Leaping up from her bedroll, she grabbed her sword, only to be greeted by the large and amused face of a lion. This lion was much bigger than the thin, sickly creature Darya had seen in the king’s menagerie before she had set sail -- this lion was larger than a horse-cart, with claws sharper than knives and eyes bright green and alive with intelligence. 

Darya sighed and put away her sword. 

“Why did you do that?” asked the lion. 

“Well, it wouldn’t do anything against a lion of your size,” she explained. 

“Are you resigned to be eaten, then?” 

“I hope not to be,” Darya replied. “If you can talk, perhaps you can be reasoned with. I’m very bony at the moment. It wouldn’t be worth it to eat me.” 

The Lion licked at his paws delicately and when he was finished, he seemed to have come to a decision. “I won’t eat you, as you are right -- human beings are troublesome meals. If you like, I can travel you with a little while, until you return home.” 

“I can’t return home, I’ve been shipwrecked. But Lion, tell me, what’s happened to the people of this country? It seems that there is no one here.” 

“My name is Leo,” said the lion, and stalked over to the fire and curled up next to it. Darya shivered, for Leo had blocked off most of her heat. It seemed like the big cat had gone to sleep. 

At Darya’s sound of protest, Leo’s ears flicked. 

“The people of this country are cursed,” he said with a blood-curdling yawn. “They’re waiting for a pure-hearted hero to save them from their transformation, but no one has ever been able to. I suppose the country will fall to ruin now, if it hasn’t already.” 

“What’s this hero supposed to do?” Darya asked, but the lion was snoring loudly beside her now. Grudgingly, Darya moved closer to him and went to sleep. 

*

The next day, Darya packed up her meager belongings and started off on the great road that led away from the sea. The lion walked beside her, though he often would claim it had no interest in her quest. 

“Humans have never treated animals well,” he said. “Why should I spend any effort to bring them back?” 

“Isn’t it the right thing to do?” Darya answered him. “After all, not every human has harmed a lion. I would wager that most have not.” 

“Who knows what’s right,” said the lion, in a voice that made it clear that he thought he was. 

After a day of walking, Darya spotted a wall in the distance and when she drew closer, she saw that it was a city, small but perfect built -- and perfectly empty. Darya walked through the gates, past a fountain that had long since been emptied, up to courtyard of a palace. There, she saw a strange thing: a statue of a giant mid-battle with a knight. 

The knight seemed to be losing the fight, judging from his helmet that had been thrown in a corner and the blood on his cheek. 

Blood? Curious, Darya drew closer, despite the lion’s low roar of warning and wiped the blood off the marble cheek of the knight. As she did so, the knight seemed to come to life, knocking her out of the way as he attacked the giant, who creaked into to action as well. 

Their fight began in earnest and Darya scrambled over to where Leo was, to get away from the giant’s swinging braids and the knight’s sharp sword. It seemed like they were destined to kill each other, but Darya decided that she ought to at least try to stop the bloodshed. 

“Oi, stop that!” she yelled, raising her voice to be heard over the din of battle. 

“Leave the fighting to me, young maiden! I will protect this city from this grimy monster!” said the knight. 

“Who are you calling grimy? I bet I’ve had more baths than you have, your majesty!” 

“Why must you be so rude, Phyllis!” said the knight -- or perhaps the king, as he was knocked back to the ground. 

“Why must you fight me whenever you get the chance, Theodore!” cried Phyllis. 

“Wait! If you two know each other, why are you fighting?” Darya asked. 

“Well, you know …” said Theodore with a shrug. He put down his sword. 

“Something to do since all the people disappeared,” Phyllis said. “That spell Theo put us under wasn’t supposed break for ages. Of course, you can’t depend on him for anything.” 

“It was supposed to be broken when -- you know --” Theodore said. They both turned to look at Darya. 

“Yes! I’m here to break the curse!” Darya said. “Now, tell me what to do.” 

“If we knew, why would we need you?” Phyllis asked her honestly. 

“You’re so rude, Phyllis,” complained Theodore. “Of course, we know broadly what to do. The pure-hearted hero must ask the Bright Flock to release this land from its curse, and if he does what they ask of him, the people will be freed. Simple enough.” 

“And where is this Bright Flock?” Darya asked. 

“No one knows,” Leo said. “Some legends say that in the mountains in the north of the country, there is a lake where the Bright Flock nest, but it could just be rumors.” 

“Will the great road lead me to the mountains?” Darya asked Phyllis. 

“Eventually,” Phyllis said. 

“Well then, I’m off.” 

As Darya turned to leave, she noticed that Phyllis and Theodore were following her and Leo. She turned back and told them that they needn’t do that. 

“It seems better than being trapped in an endless cycle of violence,” said Theodore. 

“Even though I was winning that,” Phyllis agreed. 

*

Once they had left the city behind them, the horizon remained stubbornly flat as they walked down the great road for many days. Every night, the clouds seemed to gather over their little party, and they would be buffeted by many winds and gusts of rain. The North Star was nowhere in sight. But Darya would check her compass when she needed to -- and always they would keep heading north. 

Eventually, Darya learned much about her traveling companions -- how despite their differences, Phyllis and Theodore had been friends their whole lives through and because of their singular focus on fighting each other, they had missed the curse that had vanished all their family and friends, or how Leo too had washed ashore in this strange country, though he refused to answer where he had come from before. 

Though Leo threatened to eat all of them regularly, he never went through with his promise, though sometimes he would disappear and Darya would hear a far, plaintive cry of a goat, before Leo would return to them with a reddish muzzle. 

Sometimes along the way, they would pass a country house, long abandoned, and stay there overnight. Darya would sleep on a feather bed and marvel at the softness. When she slept, she could ignore the rattling of the window panes and the leaking roof. In her dreams, she would be sitting in a chair in front of a fire, speaking to a woman who seemed to know everything about her. 

She would ask questions about Darya’s journey, which Darya would answer to the best of her ability, all the while trying to guess the identity of the woman in front her. The woman was neither old nor young, light nor dark. Instead, she seemed to blaze in the corner of Darya’s eyes, though when she looked at her directly, she seemed perfectly ordinary. 

One night, in the middle of a conversation about what the Bright Flock might want from her, Darya took out her compass and saw the arrow point straight towards the woman. She lifted her eyes and looked at her companion in wonder. 

The North Star smiled. “I cannot see you at night anymore, Darya. So I thought I would visit you now, when you sleep.” 

“Are these visits real?” Darya wondered. “Or am I only dreaming it?”

“Dreams are real enough,” the North Star said, looking a little sad. She seemed to flicker, somehow and Darya thought that was why she leaned up and kissed the star. The North Star gasped a little, but didn’t move away. Instead, she looked at Darya under a sweep of shadowy lashes and smiled. 

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” 

“It seems to be right,” Darya said. “Don’t you think so?” 

“Oh, I have no claims to know what’s right,” said the North Star. 

“Why do you all keep saying that?” Darya said, as she woke up. 

The next day, the horizon grew less flat. The day after that, there were hills in the distance. Another day, and the mountains grew closer and closer until finally, they reached the mountains and the road ended. 

*

There was a single golden feather hammered into a sign post for a narrow trail up the mountains. The group walked up in a single file upwards -- with Darya in the lead, followed by Leo and then Theodore with Phyllis bring up the rear. It rained and blew all day and all night, which made the trek especially dangerous. There was more than one time that one of the group would lose their footing, only to be caught by the person next to them. 

Laboriously, they made their way up the mountains until, finally, they came to a deep and narrow lake in the middle of the mountains. In the middle of the lake was an island shrouded in mist. On the shores of the lake was a boat, big enough for one person only. 

Darya jumped on the boat before anyone else could. 

“I should go,” Theodore said, “I am the king, after all.” 

“I am a sailor,” Darya pointed out. “I can steer a boat easier than you can.” 

“I could fight those bird-people better than you can,” Phyllis offered. 

“I could devour them easily,” Leo agreed. 

“Thank you for your help, my friends,” Darya said. “But I think for the rest of this journey, I must go alone.” 

“What foolishness,” Phyllis groused as Darya paddled away. “I think this chosen-one talk has gone to her head.” 

The more Darya rowed towards the island, the farther it seemed to be. She watched the shoreline in dismay and her muscles began to tire. What could she do? Suddenly it came to her that the island was long enough that she could row to it blindfolded, if she needed to. If there was some kind of enchantment that made it impossible to see a way to get there, why not avoid seeing it at all? 

Accordingly, Darya tied a kerchief (originally Theodore’s) over her eyes and began to row. At first, it seemed like nothing had changed, slowly but surely, Darya felt herself going forward. But her troubles weren’t over -- not in the least, as Darya realized her boat had began to sink. She rowed as quickly as she could -- judging that she was only a few feet from shore. But the boat was sinking fast and in the end, still blindfolded, Darya abandoned the boat and began to swim. 

As she pulled the kerchief from her eyes, Darya glanced down and saw a ghostly pale hand reaching for her leg. She scrambled away, swimming to shore. Once she had gotten her bearings, Darya looked around. The mist was thinner here than it had seemed on the other side of the lake -- she could see tall, thin shapes appearing from the murk and, eventually, surrounding her in a halo of light. 

She saw then why the others had called them the Bright Flock. The leader of them, a tall, flamed headed woman with wings on her back and legs like a birds, approached her and addressed Darya by name. 

“Why do you come here?” she asked Darya. 

“I have come to ask you to release the people of this country from the curse they are under,” Darya replied, casting down her eyes. Her interlocutor and the others were too bright to look at, but Darya thought perhaps it wouldn’t do to seem afraid of them. 

“What would you give us to reverse this curse? What precious thing would you barter for these people’s lives?” 

Darya said nothing and took off her compass and placed it on the ground. 

The bird woman scratched at the ground and tossed back her head, filling the air around her with peels of laughter. 

“Oh, I like you. I can see what my sister sees in you,” she said, with a sparkling smile. 

*

When Darya swam back to the other side of the lake, she found her friends had set up camp for the night. When she emerged from the water, however, she learned that she had been gone for two days, instead of the few hours she had thought of. Any attempt to rescue her had met with failure. 

Darya accepted this information calmly enough and told her friends that this was where she would leave them. The people of this country would return soon enough -- if her bargain with the Bright Folk held, which she had no reason to doubt.

“So you’ll abandon us, then?” said Phyllis, her temper flaring.

Darya smiled and said, “Well, I am just a wanderer. You all must care for them -- the weak and the strong, your brothers and sisters all.” 

“We’ll miss you,” Theodore said, “even Phyllis.” 

“Thank you,” Darya said. “I’ll miss you all.” 

“Is this self-inflicted exile a part of your deal with the Bright Flock?” Leo asked and Darya hesitated and reached out to him. 

“May I? I’ve wanted to since we’ve met.” 

Leo sighed and nodded. Darya stroked his mane and may have muttered good kitty under her breath, though she would deny it to her dying day. 

*

And so Darya went on alone -- or rather, alone at first, but as she made her way down the mountains, a lost dog emerged from the gloom and trotted with her. As they walked together, Darya looked up to see the North Star shining down upon her. 

“I never figured out what was right,” Darya said thoughtfully. 

As she walked along, the North Star appeared beside her, and walked with her -- towards home, or to another adventure. Who could say? 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, sath!


End file.
